Plant List For City of Pasadena’s First Public Sponge Garden
Posted on 03. May, 2012 by pamela in G3 Blog, G3 Community, G3 Design Studio, Los Angeles/South Bay, Pasadena Sponge Garden, Plants, Rain Gardens, Resources, Watershed Notes
Pasadena Sponge Garden Gals
It all started in August 2011, when the Pasadena Planning Dept.’s Cultural Arts Division teamed up with Pasadena Power & Water and the Public Works Dept. to consider building a garden through community participation. Nancy Long from Power & Water called G3 to meet a site that was going to host a public art installation, and the artist was keen to have a “rain garden” surrounding the art. Although this first site didn’t gel, eight months later, the Pasadena Sponge Garden at the corners of Union and Catalina Aves. became a reality. Here’s a Plant List: G3 Design Studio Pasadena Rain Garden Plants and Planting Plan: Pasadena Sponge Garden Design 042812 for the garden. Additionally, we’ve included a Hydrozone List: Hydrozones Pasadena Sponge Garden for the plant selection. For more great information about lots of Water Conservation topics, check out Pasadena Power & Water’s website. G3′s looking forward to the next collaboration with the amazing team from the City of Pasadena.
Low Impact Dunbar-Spring
Posted on 04. Apr, 2012 by pamela in G3 Blog, G3 Community, G3 Education, Green Infrastructure, Neighborhood Walks, Rain Capture, Rain Gardens, Resources, Watershed Notes
Surfrider's Paul Herzog Starting LID Tour At BICAS
The holy book (Rainwater Harvesting For Drylands And Beyond Vol. 1) requires that, at one time during their lives, all Green Infrastructure pilgrims must make their way to Brad Lancaster’s neighborhood in Tucson, Arizona, called Dunbar Spring. Perhaps the most stunning aspect of this oasis of rainwater endowment is the birdsong choir that follows one throughout the visit — birds of all sizes flit from native Mesquite (Prosopis pubescens) to Ironwood (Olneya tesota) and surf the fragile branches of Chuparosa (Justicia californica) and Palo verde (Cercidium microphyllum and Cercidium floridum). Watershed Management Group, hosts of the 2012 Tucson AridLID Conference, arranged for a bicycle tour of Dunbar Spring to get up close and personal with the simple curb cuts and sunken water wells around native trees that identify the neighborhood as the most water-progressive in Tucson.
Curb Cuts
Embracing Water As A Resource
The bicycle tour started at BICAS (Bicycle Inter-Community Art & Salvage), a collectively-run community-based non-profit education and recycling center for bicycles, devoted to the facilitation of affordable alternatives to travel by auto. BICAS and other people-scale businesses arrived in this neighborhood in the mid-1990′s, around the same time Brad Lancaster was making his first, subversive curb cuts allowing stormwater to flow on to his property from the street. This neighborhood-scale green infrastructure is so very simple — cuts or cores in the curb, native and edible trees and understory plants strategically placed in depressions to receive the flow, meandering decomposed granite pathways, traffic-calming water receptacles in the form of bump-outs and circles, and using paint to create perpendicular parking instead of parallel parking, effectively narrowing the wider of the busy streets. The effect is stunning. Time slows to the pace of a stroller or bicycle. Dappled sunlight filters through wispy, native trees. Colors seem brighter in shaded bird and animal refuge nooks. People smile — laugh — enjoy living in Dunbar Spring.
TV Killed Thinking Man
Now that we have experienced the transformative experience of community-based green infrastructure, we are thinking about how best to transport these lessons to the urban deserts of California. What medium best suits the message of cherished resources and better quality of life? Maybe via cave paintings…
Smokin’ Design At Inglewood Fire Station OFG
Posted on 15. Mar, 2012 by pamela in Compost Tea, Fire Station 171, G3 Blog, G3 Community, G3 Design Studio, G3 Partners, Living Soil, Los Angeles/South Bay, Rain Gardens, Resources, Surfrider Foundation, Watershed Notes, West Basin
Spring has arrived a trifle early at the West Basin Ocean Friendly Demonstration Garden Project at Inglewood Fire Station 171. G3 Founding Member, Marilee Kuhlmann’s planting design is beginning to fill in and start its non-stop blooming, despite the slow start from an extremely dry winter.
This garden, populated entirely by all-native or close cultivars, was completed in November 2011 with the expectation that the rainy season would help the plants to become established. Thank goddess for that healthy, mycorrhizal fungi-filled soil G3 created on site through multiple applications of Aerobic Compost Tea from G3 Associate, Sherri Powell (a.k.a. Compost Teana) on relatively young compost produced by Las Virgenes MWD from biosolids derived from their water treatment facility.
Fungal Soil From Compost Tea
Alas, not much water has been able to gather in the rock-filled swales that capture storm water runoff from the adjacent hard surfaces like the decomposed granite pathway and existing sidewalks.
Groundcovers like pink yarrow (Achillea millefolium ‘Island Pink’) and coral bells (Heuchera maxima) already are filling in the gaps between California native oaks (Quercus agrifolia) and sycamores (Platanus racemosa), which are just beginning to bloom or show their leaves.
Salvia and Calylophus heat up garden
Red autumn sages (Salvia greggii) and yellow sundrops (Calylophus hartwegii) give that hot blast of color so appropriate for spring at a fire station. This Ocean Friendly Garden already is proving that Marilee’s painterly approach is a perennial crowd-pleaser. Once again, G3 demonstrates that an Ocean Friendly Garden is the right stuff for public and commercial properties and is just as appropriate in your own front yard.
Conservation Starts With LID Education
Posted on 14. Mar, 2012 by pamela in Environment 911, G3 Blog, Green Infrastructure, Rain Capture, Rain Gardens, Resources, Water, Watershed Notes
It’s time for the Conservation folks to be honest with the public about the realities of “reliable” water supply and join hands with Stormwater folks who need to motivate property stewards to break with a century of building code and begin SLOWING, SPREADING, and SINKING rainwater on EVERY SITE possible. Jason Gurdak, Assistant Professor of Geosciences at San Francisco State University, notes “conservation starts with educating future generations about where their resources come from and how limited they may be.” Gurdak has been studying the effects of climate change on groundwater, and the results are as expected — we need to start thinking seriously about recharge NOW, BEFORE the water table drops to the point where it cannot be recharged.
Says Gurdak, “In many ways, California is leading the way in developing solutions. Artificial recharge, managed storage and recovery projects and low impact development around the state will become more important for many local water systems to bank excess water in aquifers.”
For more on Jason Gurdak’s research, check out his book.
Watershed Management Group Embraces Ocean Friendly Gardens
Posted on 21. Nov, 2011 by pamela in G3 Blog, G3 Community, G3 Design Studio, G3 Partners, Ocean Friendly Gardens, Rain Capture, Rain Gardens, Resources, Surfrider Foundation, Ventura County, Watershed Notes
The Watershed Management Group’s Fall 2011 Newsletter featured an article by Paul Herzog of Surfrider Foundation’s Ocean Friendly Gardens Program. The article discusses the transformation of a typical turf-covered front yard in Ventura County, CA into a beautiful, California-native front yard that holds all the rain from the adjacent roof. This garden was designed by the homeowner after attending an OFG Watershed Basics Class hosted by Surfrider Ventura Chapter and the City of Ventura, and taught by G3. The garden was installed through an OFG GAP Volunteer Workday that was led by G3 and was the site of the first Ventura County Lawn Patrol. WMG OFG Profile
